Almost everyone seems to run Google Adsense on their websites. Oprah even has it on hers, so it’s got to be worthwhile. But Google Adsense seem to perform well on some sites and badly on others.

Obviously, to make a huge amount of money from Google Adsense, you need lots of traffic. But you also need to tweak your Ad placements, colours used etc, to discover what will work best for your site. And, you need to suss out what keyphrases will bring you a higher amount per click.

I’ve done ok with Adsense on other sites but on this blog my clickthrough rate has been lousy. In fact, sometimes it’s been as low as 0.01%. So I’m always trying to tweak it and find new tips to improve my Adsense earnings. According to Google Adsense Case studies, sites like Ask The Builder, Hometips, Woot and TestMagic are making mega bucks from Google Adsense, so I don’t see why we can’t do the same.

I got the first excellent Adsense tip from Al of Self Made Minds. And Al is on target to make seven figures from blogging this year, so he’s certainly worth listening to (note - Al doesn’t write all his posts himself, he pays people to do it for him).

Al suggests that instead of allowing Adsense to choose which text in your posts, is most relevant for your ads, you choose your own. You simply pick out the text which you’d like Adsense to use when choosing your ads and wrap code around it, as he shows in this excellent Adsense code placement example.

The other Adsense tip I got was from Vered of Momgrind. She was so tired of seeing ads she didn’t approve of on her blog, that she has set up her adsense account up to block ads from certain domains. This feature is also useful if particular ads pay badly, or do extremely well.

There’s two ways you can do it. You can click the competitive ad filter on your Google Adsense dashboard and enter the url’s of advertisers that you want to block from appearing on your website. Or you can click on allowed sites and list only the URL’s that you do want to allow on your website.

Obviously, Google Adsense amounts paid per click can vary tremendously. Some keyphrases do pay in excess of $50 per click. But often, they’re for keywords that have heaps of competition and get little traffic. I’m determined to get Adsense working well for me, because once you do get it right, the income requires little effort to maintain. So I’m working my way through these Adsense video’s by Michael Cheney, who earns over $30,000 a month from Google Adsense.

If you’re not a member already, it’s free to join Google Adsense.. And if you’re already a member but you don’t think Adsense is right for your site, you might want to sign up to one of these instead.

Have you tried out Al’s, Vered’s or Michael’s ideas already? It certainly seems like a smart idea to control who advertises on your site, or which content Adsense uses when placing an ad.

Affiliate commissions from some programs can be huge. In fact some advertisers will pay you more than 50% in affiliate commissions, if you advertise their products on your website or blog.

If you’re not familiar with affiliate programs - they work in a similar way to advertising. But instead of being paid when someone views, or clicks on an ad on your site, you are paid a commission if one of your readers buys something from the advertiser.

Unfortunately, some advertisers will go out of their way to screw you out of your affiliate commissions. So, if you’re considering using affiliate programs to make money on your website, or blog, you might want to read on to make sure you don’t get ripped off.

Some Tips To Avoid Getting Ripped Off On Your Affiliate Commissions

You wouldn’t expect businesses to steal your affiliate commissions would you? After all, affiliates work hard to promote their products and if they cheat them, they might wind up with no affiliates at all. Trouble is, some of them are short sighted and seem to think nothing of stealing their affiliates commissions.

Advertising For Affiliates At The Top of The Page:

Check that the seller isn’t advertising for affiliates at the top of the page. Some do this, to encourage potential buyers to use their own affiliate link to buy their program. I know of one company who actually comes right out in their sales pitch and tells buyers to sign up as an affiliate and buy through their own affiliate link.

I guess they do this, because it’s easier for them to sell their product at the lower price. They’re not losing any money, or gaining any but they’re making more sales. And when this happens, you’re losing your affiliate commissions.

You really need to avoid companies who do this to affiliates. I recently ditched one company completely. They have a good product but the customers I was sending over there just weren’t converting into sales. So, I checked the link I was using to send readers to the site and there was actually a little banner floating across the page, encouraging buyers to join there affiliate program. Very tacky - and a low way to con folk out of their affiliate commissions.

Affilliate Management Programs That Encourage Advertisers To Rip Affiliates Off

It’s terribly unfair but apparently this does happen. Commission Junction have been accused of this and I recently received a postcard in the mail saying that publishers are taking legal action against Commission Junction.

I don’t use Commission Junction much now because of the allegations. And I don’t know how true they are but I do know that I’ve bought two different products through my own affiliate links and didn’t receive a commission. In one case, the advertiser actually encouraged affiliates to use their own link to buy from them. So, it’s easy to see how these companies got caught ripping affiliates off.

Companies Who Use Their Own Domain Name or Phone Number In The Affiliate Ad

Companies who use their domain names or their phone numbers in their banner ads are a waste of time too. If people see the banner on your site and either type in the domain name, or use the phone number you get bugger all for your efforts.

So Do All Advertisers Rip Affiliates Off?

No. There’s still plenty of good affiliate programs to join. Not everyone is stupid enough to bite the hand that feeds them, or dishonest enough to con you out of your affiliate commissions.

I like LinkShare Referral Program, as they’re a reputable and they have some excellent quality advertisers, including Nickelodeon, L’Occitane, Zales, Cheap Tickets and Fujitsu.

Also, I recently joined Pepperjam. The network was created by affiliates for affiliates and they are providing things that aren’t possible with most other affiliate programs. For example you can create your own ads. They look similar to adsense but you can mix and match ads by various advertisers.

If you’re interested in using affiliate marketing to earn commissions on your website or blog and you’re only just starting out, I highly recommend Rosalind Gardner’s Super Affiliate Handbook. Unlike some so called Guru’s, she actually makes hundreds of thousands of dollars a year from affiliate marketing. And you shares some great advice on how to build a real affiliate business from scratch.

And if you’ve been doing affiliate marketing for sometime, but you could use more traffic to help you make a decent profit, Secret Affiliate Code 2 shows you how to get plenty of free traffic and rank number one on Google for your keywords.

I’m the proud owner of one of the worst websites on the Internet. Or at least I was. It’s just a hobby site and I’d barely looked at it, or updated it for over a year. You see, I suck at website design. In fact, when it comes to building websites, I’m practically colour blind. Imagine the sickliest shade of blue, with bright red Adsense ads glaring out at you and you get the picture.

Now, don’t get me wrong - when I say it’s one of the worst websites on the Internet, I mean the design sucks. But it’s not one of those crappy made for adsense sites. The content is pretty good.

Well I noticed the other day that I was making around seven dollars a day in Google Adsense on that site and I was also getting a bit of cash from the odd affiliate link. It doesn’t sound much but you’ve got to realise, this website was only getting 40 to 50 visitors a day. When you stick something on the Internet and forget about it, you can’t expect a traffic orgy.

So, I thought, it wouldn’t take too much effort to get ten times the amount of traffic. And the quickest way to do that is by putting it on a blog. I’d simply move part of the content over and add the rest in posts each day. Once it was up and running, I’d outsource a few hours of marketing and post writing a week and I’d have a nice additional stream of income.

At the weekend, I moved some of the content across to Wordpress. Then I checked my stats today and I was pleased to discover that I had five times the amount of traffic already. Now, before you think about emailing me to ask if I can built you one of the worst possible websites too, there’s something you should know.

My Google Adsense rate has plummeted. In fact, I earned less money than I was getting when I had less traffic. My clickthrough rate has gone down to only 2%. When my website sucked it was way higher - on a good day it was as high as 33%. So I guess the reason it was doing so well is that my website was just too much for some people’s eyes and they’d click anything to escape.

Now, I haven’t added any affiliate links yet, so I’ll give that a try first. But if I have no joy, I think I might reload the old theme, build myself ten more of the worst websites ever, stick them up and forget about them and keep collecting the cash from Google.

What do you think? If you come across one of the worst looking websites you’ve ever seen, do you give the content a chance, or would you click on just about anything you could find to get the hell out of there fast?

Has this inspired you to build some of the ugliest websites ever, if it meant you got a high Adsense clickthrough rate? Or would you be too embarrassed to be associated with them?